Location selection of intra-city distribution hubs in the metro-integrated logistics system

Logistics in cities depends largely on ground transportation and causes problems such as traffic congestion, environmental impact and delivery delays. Taking advantage of a metro system's underutilized capacity to transport same-day delivery items within a city during off-peak periods is not only innovative, but can mitigate the abovementioned urban transportation problems. In this paper, we locate the distribution hubs and construct a metro-integrated logistics system. First, we propose a segmentation method for the urban metro network. Second, based on the resulting sub-networks, indices for evaluating the importance of each metro station are selected by complex network theory and the weight of each evaluation index is calculated by AHP method. Moreover, the importance of each metro station is evaluated using the TOPSIS model and the candidate metro distribution hubs for location model are determined. Then, with the consideration of logistics demand, a location model is formulated to determine the final metro distribution hubs from the candidate metro distribution hubs. Finally, we choose the metro system of Shanghai as a case study and provide strategic planning for location selection of metro distribution hubs.